Are extremists exploiting the pandemic?

Social Media Photo: Bigstock

SALEEM SAMAD

Conspiracy theories and disinformation are spreading at an alarming rate

When Sara Khan, lead commissioner for an independent Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) in a flagship report “Challenging Hateful Extremism” talked of how effective existing British laws are in dealing with hateful extremist activity -- policy-makers and government officials in Britain were dumbfounded.

The report, launched on June 10, observes that the far right to the far left and Islamist groups have fully exploited the global coronavirus crisis to promote dangerous conspiracy theories and disinformation, mostly online.

A private study has been posted by the United Kingdom government’s official website, which says CCE advises the government on new policies to deal with extremism, including the need for any new powers.

The non-governmental organization, CCE, supports society to fight all forms of extremism and has closely worked with the British Police Department.

The extremists joined in separate social media space, joined by #CovIdiots across all spectrums. From far right and far left, all are agog in 5G conspiracy theories on platforms such as Telegram, a multi-platform messaging service platform.

Conspiracy theories need just the right ingredients to take off within a population, and the Covid-19 pandemic has been a breeding ground for them.

The independent commission has pulled together several other pieces of research to draw a broader canvas of the extremist threat during the pandemic. A narrative spread like wildfire on social media that the wireless network 5G technology fuelled the coronavirus pandemic.

The conspiracy theory on the Covid-19 outbreak believes that the virus pandemic is part of a strategy conceived by global elites - such as Bill Gates - to roll-out coronavirus vaccines with tracking chips that would later be activated by 5G, the technology used by mobile technology networks.

Such mindless #CovIdiots in Bangladesh are equally active in social media. They are active in posting conspiracy theories in attempts to inject into the novice minds of young and old, rich and poor that coronavirus is a Western conspiracy by Christians and Jews responsible for funding research in Wuhan labs.

Well, wearing masks, using sanitizers, washing hands, and testing for coronavirus are selling points of multinational companies and their accomplices in the country.

What about those millions who are infected, hospitalized, and dying from coronavirus? The #CovIdiots mysteriously remain silent and dish out stereotypical responses to such pressing issues.

The study further emphasized that hateful extremists have used divisive, xenophobic, and racist narratives to sow division and undermine the social fabric of Britain.

Unless the British government urgently invests in counter-extremism measures, extremists will seek to capitalize on the socio-economic impacts of Covid-19 to cause further long-term instability, fear, and division in Britain.

For a democratic government, in the United Kingdom, the impact of extremist propaganda and disinformation shouldn’t be undermined. These conspiracy theories are harmful, dangerous, and are used by extremists to cause division and breed hate, reiterated Sara Khan.

Now a social media strategy needs to be developed to challenge dangerous conspiracy theories based on the harm they cause. This will enable practitioners on social media platforms to better challenge harmful conspiracy theories before they escalate.

Bangladesh shouldn’t miss the opportunity to join the global effort to classify dangerous conspiracy theories. 

A fresh counter-extremism strategy must include an assessment of how extremism manifests locally, the harm it causes, the scale of support for extremist narratives, and how best to pre-empt extremist activity.

The assessment should also include the people most vulnerable to extremist narratives, to deliver vital interventions to engage and support these guiltless people. 

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 13 July 2020

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, and recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He can be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com. Twitter @saleemsamad

FExB/মুক্ত প্রাকাশ on 30 Days Audit of Media in Lockdown

Dhaka, 27 April 2020:

The government imposed a countrywide lockdown from 26 March 2020 and extended for the third consecutive period until 05 May 2020 for containment of the outbreak of the coronavirus.

Forum for Freedom of Expression, Bangladesh (FExB) or মুক্ত প্রাকাশ(in Bangla), a network of media rights defenders has expressed deep anguish and grave concern over the developments during 30 Days of Lockdown which has taken a toll on Bangladesh news organisations, journalists, whistleblowers, and citizen-journalists.

The country is reeling from the COVID-19 crisis and the vulnerable segments of our society are the most at risk. Besides the “healthcare warriors”, the journalists are also on the frontline. The journalists and citizen-journalists are frequently targeted by state and non-state actors while reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak, which FExB reckons to be a serious threat to freedom of expression.

When Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took an effort to scale-up food aid for the disadvantaged population in response to the nationwide shutdown, the media organizations, journalists and whistleblowers had to take the brunt of anger and vengeance by local leaders and government officials including the police.

Nearly twenty journalists were attacked, intimidated, harassed, or arrested for reporting on pilferage, corruption, and lack of accountability in food aid meant for poor people who are facing extreme hardship during the lockdown.

FExB states that Thakurgaon district is the worst place for journalism in the country after six journalists were subjected to judicial harassment within a week.

On 19 April, two editors Toufique Imrose Khalidi, Editor-in-Chief of bdnews24.com, Mohiuddin Sarker, acting editor of jagonews24.com along with three other journalists Rahim Suvho, Thakurgaon correspondent of bdnews24.com and a local journalist Shaown Amin were accused under draconian Digital Security Act.

After ten days of publication of the news in two news portals on misappropriation of open market sale (OMS) rice, the Baliadangi Upazila’s Swechchhasebak League, also a local ruling party leader Mominul Islam filed a case against the journalists. The case is under investigation and none has been arrested.

It was also alleged that other journalists posted aggressive, false, and defamatory information against him (Mominul Islam) and his brother a Union Parishad chairman Aminul Islam Amin on their Facebook pages.

In a separate case on 15 April, police sued Al Mamun, correspondent of Dainik Odhikar district correspondent under notorious cybersecurity laws for criticising the district civil administration in Facebook for its failure to take effective measures to contain the spread of coronavirus during the lockdown.

On 21 April, another journalist in Thakurgaon Abdul Latif Litu, a local correspondent of popular newspaper Bangladesh Pratidin and private TV channel News 24 was assaulted by police at a check post during the lockdown.

FExB is deeply concerned regarding the series of attacks, intimidation, and judicial harassment of journalists and other media organisations all over the country, during the 30 Days of Lockdown.

On 31 March 2020, Sagor Chowdhury, a freelance video-blogger and editor of a local news portal 360degree was publicly assaulted by Nabil Hyder, son of Jashim Uddin Hyder, president of Borhanuddin Upazila Awami League and also chairman of Boro Manika Union Parishad over posting a live video on Facebook. Police arrested the perpetrator Nabil Hyder, a member of the Chattra League of Dhaka University.

On 1 April 2020, three journalists Shah Sultan Ahmed, Nabiganj Upazila correspondent of the Dainik Protidiner Sangbad in Habiganj, Mujibur Rahman, correspondent of Dainik Amar Sangbad and Bulbul Ahmed, correspondent of private TV Channel-S were attacked with a cricket bat by Mahibur Rahman Harun, chairman of Aushkandi Union Parishad and also a local leader of the ruling party. Sultan was shifted to Osmani Medical College in Sylhet with critical injuries.

Earlier, Sultan posted a live video on Facebook which revealed that the local leader (Harun) was distributing each of the families 5 kg of rice instead of the allocation of 10 kg.

On 10 April 2020, Nasir Uddin Rocky, a staff reporter of vernacular daily Dainik Jugantor in Chittagong was on his way to the newspaper office riding a motorcycle. At a check-post, the police arrested the journalist, later released unconditionally. The police officer was suspended.

On 12 April 2020, police in Bogura at a check-post, arbitrarily handcuffed and assaulted two journalists Majedur Rahman, correspondent of a private channel Shomoy TV and Shahjahan Ali of a private channel Ekattor TV. The journalists were dragged to the police station and were released. The delinquent police officers were suspended.

On 14 April 2020, police arrested Golam Sarwar Pintu, journalist of Dainik Bangladesher Alo after Sheikh Salim, a Dhaka city councillor of Ward 38 filed a case under notorious Digital Security Act with Badda Police Station.

Pintu’s crime was the publication of news regarding angry urban-poor community held protest demanding food aid during the lockdown.

On 16 April 2020, police assaulted Tuhin Howlader, court correspondent of a vernacular daily Bangladesh Pratidin in the capital Dhaka.

On 18 April, Bangla Vision TV correspondent Kamal Hossain was attacked by hooligans in Barishal when he tried to cover a gathering that had formed – in violation of the lockdown – because members of the local Department of Narcotics were selling alcohol to the public.

On 21 April, Rezwan Karim Sabbir, a Jaintapur upazila correspondent of the daily Nayadiganta and the Dainik Sylhet Mirror, a member of the Sylhet Jaintapur Press Club, was hospitalized at Sylhet Medical College with serious head injuries after he wa attacked by Abul Hasim, who was annoyed by an article in which the journalist had reported a local coronavirus case.

On 23 April 2020, Chairman of Amirganj Union Parishad in Narsingdi mercilessly assaulted Baten Biplob, Senior Crime Reporter and TV Anchor of SATV KHOJ, and Sajal Bhuiyan Narsingdi correspondent of TV channel SATV.

Baten Biplob in his Facebook post described the barbaric attack on journalist Sajal Bhuiyan who was profusely bleeding and crying in pain. He was admitted to Narsingdi government hospital. The perpetrators were not arrested and the police administration is not cooperating, it was alleged.

FExB demands to end impunity and to bring them to justice of the local leaders, police, and district administration officials responsible over the attacks, judicial harassments, intimidations, and arrests of frontline “media warriors”. #

Endorsed and signed by Media Rights Defenders:

1.        Dr. Aireen Jaman, General Secretary, PEN International, Bangladesh, London;

2.        Faruq Faisel, South Asia Regional Director, Article 19, London;

3.        Saleem Samad, Correspondent, Reporter Without Borders (RSF), Paris;

4.        Ahmed Swapan Mahmud, CEO, VOICE, Dhaka

5.        Khairuzzaman Kamal, Representative International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Brussels;

6.        Mainul Islam Khan, Representative, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), New York;

7.        Biplob Mostafiz, Member, Mukto Prakash (FExB), Media Rights Defender;

8.        Sayeed Ahmad, Representative, Front Line Defenders, Dublin, Ireland;

9.        Ahamad Ullah, Member, Bangladesh Manabadhikar Sangbadik Forum (BMSF), Dhaka;

10.     GM Mourtaza, CEO, CCD Bangladesh; Rajshahi.

 

For more information, please contact Saleem Samad: Mobile: +88-01711-530207; Email: ForumForFExB@gmail.com, Twitter: @saleemsamad; Faruq Faisel: Mobile: +88-01730-710267, Email: faruq@article19.org. Twitter: @faruqfaisel

Bangla 2.0: Net wave paradox

INDRAJIT HAZRA

The last Facebook update that Ahmed Rajib Haider posted was on February 15. Not too long after he had uploaded this post, his hacked body was discovered around 9.30pm in front of the house where he lived with his brother in the Mirpur area of Dhaka. 

The 30-year-old architect had an online persona of Thaba Baba (loosely translated as ‘Paw Daddy’, which he wrote as ‘Claw’ in English as an explanation).

His blogs on the popular Amarblog site regularly and primarily dealt with the menace of rising Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh.

Haider, one of the main organisers of the anti-Jamaat demonstrations at Dhaka’s Shahbagh square, was uninhibited about his distaste towards the Jamaat-e-Islami.

He had also proudly declared himself to be an atheist, something that the Jamaat has subsequently used to brand every ‘blogger’ demanding its ban as being ‘un-Islamic’ and therefore morally degenerate.

While his murderer(s) are yet to be found, most Bangladeshis believe Haider’s untimely death to be the handiwork of the Jamaat-Shibir, the lumpen youth wing of the Jamaat.

In a way, it’s rather apt that in his final Facebook post, Haider had posted the link of a news story from the Bengali daily Kaaler Kantha that detailed the massive network of assets and business interests under the Jamaat’s control.

In his comments above the link, he had strongly recommended the boycott of Jamaat-linked establishments — from banks and educational establishments to hospitals and media companies — adding that there should be a proper set of guidelines to identify Jamaat fronts since a simple transfer of shares could suggest new ownership of a company.  

This had not been the first attack on an online activist in Bangladesh. Only a month before, Asif Mohiuddin, another openly atheist blogger, was stabbed by suspected Islamists. Fortunately, he survived.

In the case of Haider, authorities and fellow bloggers point to the death threats he had received from a pro-Jamaat blog, Sonar Bangla.

If Pakistan was horrified by the brutal attack on 14-year-old blogger Malala Yousafzai by the Taliban in October last year, Haider’s murder has enraged secular Bangladesh and split the nation into two.

Facebook friends 

Inside the compound of Dhaka Art College, Asif Saleh, blogger-tweeter and senior director at the development organisation BRAC (formerly, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee), sips on his tea and explains how the popular movement against Islamist politics has been intimately connected to the successful ‘Digitial Bangladesh’ drive that has been aggressively pushing for the use of digital technology to spread education, poverty alleviation, health as well as democracy and human rights.

“The youth in Bangladesh was not politically sensitised. They were apathetic towards what was going on in the country,” says Saleh.

“With the arrival of social media platforms, ‘being political’ became cool. Young Bangladeshis have now suddenly found out that their actions do matter, their actions can lead to change,” says Saleh.

On the first day of the Shahbagh demonstrations on February 5, there were about 500 people who had gathered to protest against the life sentence, as opposed to a sentence of death, handed by the international war tribunal to Jamaat leader and accused 1971 war criminal Abdul Qader Mollah.

This core group had connected and vented online, and had decided their plan of action on Facebook.

The protests of this initial small gathering was picked up by the media, which in turn fed the news on the internet for others to join in. The media – social as well as mainstream –became force-multipliers for the movement.

 “It’s been a year since the advent of 24-hour news channels. The 24-hour format has to fill news round the clock. It was fortuitous that the Shahbagh protests filled much of news TV.

Suddenly you also saw the white-haired pundits, the usual suspects on political discussions, being joined by youngsters airing their views,” says Saleh, a computer technology graduate who came back from the United States leaving a Goldman Sachs job five years ago.

But at the core of the Shahbagh revolution lies Bangladesh’s internet revolution. Over the last three years, the cost of online communication has nosedived.

In 2009, a megabyte of information would set the consumer back by 27,000 takas. Today, a megabyte costs 5,000 takas.

Thanks to affordability, by November 2011, there were 9 million users with an internet connection in a country of 142 million people. The figures go up if one considers the many more mobile phone users.

Tech has no ideology

But here’s the flip side. The resources-rich Jamaat is disproportionately stronger online than offline.

Technology being ideologically neutral, the same social media platforms and penetrative telephony are tools for the enemies of the Shahbagh activists.

It is in the terrain where the online seeps into the offline and then feeds the online again that a new kind of war of propaganda is being fought.

Knowing that the Jamaat has already started to successfully conflate the idea of ‘blogger’ with ‘atheist’, the Awami League government has ‘cracked down’ on internet sites, removing blog posts that are deemed to be “spreading hatred, provoking social disorder and hurting religious sentiments of the people”.

Last week, information minister Hasanal Haque Inu urged the media “not to publish any indecent remark against Islam, the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad”.

The government had swiftly blocked YouTube after an allegedly blasphemous film on the prophet was “shown there”. 

These are measures that were taken by the government to ‘protect’ secular bloggers from the violent reactive politics of the Islamists — and not give a handle to the opposition BNP-Jamaat to accuse the government of being anti-Islamic.

But here’s the paradox: it was through social media that those demanding Bangladesh remain secular found their voices heard, voices that would ultimately reverberate through Shahbagh and Bangladesh.

To get that volume knob turned down as a precaution would be exactly what the Islamists want. To make the people disinterested again.

Hindustan Times, Dhaka, February 23, 2013

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/Bangladesh/Bangla-2-0-Net-wave-paradox/Article1-1016469.aspx